But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
George Eliot
William Rehnquist—I hope you die a slow and painful death. Sandra Day O'Connor—die a slow and painful death. Clarence Thomas—I hope you die slowly and painfully. Antonin Scalia—die with pain, slowly. Justice Kennedy—I forget your first name—I hope your death is painful and slow. President Bush—I hope you die so slowly, and with pain. Dick Cheney—die painfully slow, with slow pain. John Ashcroft—die slowly, painfully. You are all criminals. You will never go to jail. So just die, as soon as possible, with great pain, slowly. I would die the slowest, most painful death of all of you if it meant that just half of you would die now. Call me liberal, call me twisted and sick, I don't care. I hate you all and I hope you all die.
John S. Hall
And the other Don Quixote remained here among us, fighting with desperation. And does he not fight out of despair? ...But "despair is the master of possibilities," as we learn from Salazar y Torres (Elegir al enemigo, Act I.), and it is despair and despair alone that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, mad hope. Spero quia absurdum [I hope because it is absurd], it ought to have been said, rather than credo [Credo quia absurdam — I believe because it is absurd].
Miguel de Unamuno
Hopelessness is despair. Yet life without hope is worth living. As Sartre's Orestes says: "Life begins on the other side of despair." But is hope perhaps resumed on the other side? It need not be. In honesty, what is there to hope for? Small hopes remain but do not truly matter. I may hope that the sunset will be clear, that the night will be cool and still, that my work will turn out well, and yet know that nine hopes out often are not even remembered a year later. How many are recalled a century hence? A billion years hence?
Walter (philosopher) Kaufmann
Hope not without despair, despair not without hope. (translated by Zachariah Rush).
Seneca the Younger
It's not the despair, Laura, I can stand the despair. It's the hope.
Michael Frayn
Eliot, George
Eliot, Thomas Stearns (T. S.)
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